Why Komen Backed Down

The Susan G. Komen Fund for the Cure has learned a lot, this week, about where its strength comes from. On Tuesday, it decided to stop working with Planned Parenthood; on Friday, it reversed that decision. Komen and its founder, Nancy Brinker, had said many disjointed things about the original split, dancing around the word that was clearly at the heart of the matter: abortion. That was still true in the statement released Friday, but it was, at least, straightforwardly apologetic. The instrument for defunding Planned Parenthood was a rule change that prohibits grants to organizations “under investigation”—and Planned Parenthood was the subject of an investigation launched by a congressman who wanted to destroy it. That seemed, to many observers, to make Komen more complicit, not less. And, Komen said Friday, “We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.”

Who won this for Planned Parenthood? Was is it social media, or small donors rushing to Planned Parenthood’s side, or a few big benefactors, or people swearing not to buy any more cereal with a pink ribbon on the box—or just the truth, which all of those players pointed to, that Komen was risking its ability to present itself as a voice for women’s health, in a conversation inseparable from emotions? In America, people may spend a great deal of time shouting about abortion on every street corner, but they spend even more time thinking about it silently; the same is true, more broadly, about women’s health. Jill Lepore, in a Daily Comment that outlines the historical and political terms of the Komen fight, tells a story about Benjamin Franklin’s correspondence with his sister Jane, in which they anticipate, and then mourn, the death of another sister from breast cancer; other women in the family and their babies died early, in a time when everything associated with childbirth was more dangerous than it is today. (And that it is safer has a good deal to do, in this country, with Planned Parenthood.) These issues, Lepore writes, are not divisible, any more than a woman’s body is.

After Komen’s reversal this morning, Lepore sent me another quote from Franklin’s sister Jane: “I do not Pretend to writ a bout Politics tho I love to hear them.” There is something in there to remember, particularly when thinking about women in politics. Being quiet doesn’t mean one isn’t listening and paying attention. As Komen learned this week, many people, and many women, who wear ribbons silently are perfectly prepared to shout.